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REGULATORS BOWED TO PIPELINE COMPANY PRESSURE

Letter to the Roanoke Times, 5/20/18: At a hearing on May 8, Chief Judge Roger Gregory of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit described a relationship between the Forest Service and MVP that is valid for every government agency with a duty to protect the public from the destruction caused by the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

When Judge Gregory and his fellow judges asked why the Forest Service abruptly abandoned technical findings that MVP’s erosion discharges would be much more severe than the company predicted, lawyers for the government and MVP claimed the change was justified but could point to no agency analysis to support their assertions. An attorney for MVP said the last-minute reversal by the Forest Service was the result of a “robust back and forth” between the government and the company.

Judge Gregory was not convinced. He stated: “I’m missing the robust side of this. This seems like a one-way street. I don’t call that robust. I call it capitulation.”

Judge Gregory saw what citizens have seen for years; that regulatory agencies have abandoned their own experts and caved to pressure from pipeline proponents. Just as this is true of the Forest Service, for both MVP and ACP, it is true of the Virginia DEQ.

DEQ technical experts warned in comments on both pipelines that without “pre-impact characterizations of proposed stream and wetland crossings” these ecosystems may not “be able to maintain [their] original functions.” Such pre-impact assessments have not been done but DEQ has chosen to ignore those warnings without any technical explanations to justify that choice.

The good thing is that Governor Northam and the Virginia State Water Control Board have one last chance to make this right. Going along with what the pipeline companies want even when their proposals are not scientifically proven to fully protect our waters is capitulation. It is unacceptable. It must end now.

Trenching had been completed when this photo was taken on August 5th, 2018. FERC allowed Dominion to string pipe in this and other sections of the right-of-way corridor during the next week - despite a court order voiding required permits. FERC has also approved continued work to insall the pipe in the trench.

Forest Fragmentation and the ACPThe Atlantic Coast Pipeline would pass through areas of outstanding biodiversity in Virginia and West Virginia, fragmenting core forests and threatening species that depend on interior forest habitat.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline

The proposed pipeline will cross the central Allegheny Highlands, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the adjacent valleys. It will cut through 30 miles of national forest and cross numerous rivers, streams, and wetlands. This area represents the heart of the remaining wild landscape in the eastern United States, and it is a major biodiversity refugium that can only increase in rarity and importance.

The proposed pipeline will be 42 inches in diameter, requiring excavation of an 8 to 12-foot-deep trench and the bulldozing of a 125-foot-wide construction corridor straight up and down multiple steep-sided forested mountains. It will require construction of heavy-duty transport roads and staging areas for large earth-moving equipment and pipeline assembly. It will require blasting through bedrock, and excavation through streams and wetlands. It will require construction across unstable and hydrologically sensitive karst terrain.

Pipeline construction on this scale, across this type of steep, well-watered, forested mountain landscape, is unprecedented.

It will be impossible to avoid degradation of water resources, including heavy sedimentation of streams, alteration of runoff patterns and stream channels, disturbance of groundwater flow, and damage to springs and water supplies.

It will be impossible to avoid fragmentation and degradation of intact, high-integrity forests, including habitat for threatened and endangered species and ecosystem restoration areas.